this is "nightline." >> tonight, about-face. confronted with growing calls for impeachment, after his supporters stormed the u.s. capitol, president trump tonight acknowledging a new administration. >> my focus now turns to ensuring a smooth, orderly, and seamless transition of power. >> now the search for rioters. and the backdrop of hate sparking cries of condemnation. plus double standard. how law enforcement handleddemo floyd's death last summer versus the white mob storming the halls of democracy. >> if it had been a group of black lives matter protesting yesterday, they would have been treated very, very differently. and the silent heroes helping congress get back in

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♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ (beeping sound) ♪ ♪ ♪ good evening. thank you for joining us. tonight, the president finally acknowledging a transition to administration. this coming after a deadly day of mayhem sweeping through congress and led by a trump-supporting mob. now the chief of the capitol

police has resigned after the department's poor response to the siege. and there are fresh calls to rem remove the president. >> what we witnessed yesterday was not dissent, it was not disorder, it was not protest. it was chaos. don't dare call them protesters. they were a riotous mob. insurrectionists. domestic terrorists. >> reporter: president-elect joe biden denouncing the perpetrators of yesterday's attacks on the capitol. the most heinous in modern history. correctly pointing the finger at president donald trump as the architect of the anarchy. >> i wish we could say we couldn't see it coming. but that isn't true. the past four years, we've had a president who's made his contempt for our democracy, our constitution, the rule of law, clear in everything he has done.

>> joseph r. biden jr. of the state of delaware has received 306 votes. donald j. trump of the state of florida has received 232 votes. >> reporter: with biden's victory now certified, and less than two weeks before leaving office, president trump this evening finally acknowledging his presidency is ending. >> a new administration will be inaugurated on january 20th. my focus now turns to ensuring a smooth, orderly, and seamless transition of power. >> reporter: the video was posted to his recently unfrozen twitter account. the president had been blocked after posting a video that did not condemn the capitol hill riots and continued to perpetuate his lies. but his megaphone isn't completely turned back on. facebook announcing it will continue blocking president trump's account, including instagram, for at least through the end of his term, and potentially indefinitely. >> he's still the president of the united states. he's got massive power.

and of course he's the commander in chief. he still has somebody who follows him around with the nuclear codes. >> reporter: democrats and a few republicans today calling for the immediate removal of the president. >> a very dangerous person who should not continue in office. this is urgent. this is emergency of the highest magnitude. >> the president is unfit, and the president is unwell. and the president must now relinquish control of the executive branch, voluntarily or involuntarily. >> reporter: soon to be senate majority leader chuck schumer asking vice president pence to invoke the 25th amendment. >> he may have only 13 days left as president, but yesterday demonstrated that each and every one of those days is a threat to democracy so long as he is in power. >> the most practical thing that is likely to happen is simply trying to box the president in, dealing with the vice president as if he were the acting president.

he doesn't actually have that authority, but this would be an effort to try to just keep the president isolated and unable to do any more damage. >> reporter: house speaker nancy pelosi threatening a second impeachment if pence does not comply. >> my phone is exploding with impeach, impeach, impeach. a president must be held accountable again. >> reporter: the washington, d.c. police department has made 80 arrests so far, releasing this 26-page person of interest document, asking for the public's help in identifying individuals who were part of the mob. >> as we speak, we have members of the metropolitan police department that are scouring the area hotels, businesses, et cetera, trying to identify some of these individuals. >> stop the steal! >> reporter: abc news separately identifying several of the individuals, including richard barnett in arkansas, the man photographed with his feet on speaker pelosi's desk. jake angeli, seen at the president's rally, who appears to have posted several videos

about the baseless q-anon conspiracy theory. tim gionet, "baked alaska," a well-known personality who livestreamed himself storming the capitol. adam johnson from florida, seen here carrying off speaker pelosi's podium. critics are questioning why despite early morning signs on social media and right-wing websites, even a tweet from president trump in mid-december saying in part, big protest in d.c. on january 6th, be there, will be wild. >> i think right here we're going to walk down to the capitol. you'll never take back our country with weakness. >> reporter: how there could be such a shockingly small police presence. >> there should have been a massive police presence from all levels of government, and now we know that the failure was real. i think it's a black eye for our nation, something that won't soon be forgotten. >> reporter: some are

questioning the actions of the capitol hill police officers who were there, after videos posted on social media appeared to show officers moving barricades aside. >> oh there we go! >> reporter: another one posing for a selfie. >> obviously it was a failure, or you would not have had police lines breached. >> reporter: authorities say they recovered 11 molotov cocktails, a military assault rifle, and two potentially lethal pipe bombs near the republican and democratic committee national headquarters. >> anyone that considers themselves a patriotic american not speaking out, take a hard look in the mirror. because i promise you that you're not a patriot unless you stand up. >> reporter: the 80 arrests that the d.c. metropolitanpolice made yesterday is just a fraction of the arrests made during the black lives matter protests last summer, where on one night they made 289 arrests. >> we must also understand why the federal law enforcement response was much stronger at

the protests over the summer than during yesterday's attack on congress. >> over the summer, we watched as law enforcement came out in full force. we sawmill tear helicopters flying low. we saw tear gas and pepper balls deployed on peaceful demonstrators. we saw them being forcibly pushed back in order to clear a path for president trump to take a photo op at st. john's church. you may remember him holding up that bible. these were just two completely different scenes after covering both. my big question was, what would have happened here at the u.s. capitol if those rioters would have been black? >> reporter: the events of yesterday and the police response yet another stark reminder, deep racial wounds the nation still carries. >> no one can tell me that if it had been a group of black lives matter protesting yesterday, there wouldn't have been -- they wouldn't have been treated very, very differently than the mob of

thugs that stormed the capitol. we all know that's true. and it is unacceptable. totally unacceptable. >> earlier this evening i spoke with former republican governor of new jersey and abc news contributor chris christie. good evening, governor. what's your reaction to trump's video this evening, and is this the kind of tone that could have prevented what happened yesterday? >> sure. especially if he had done that on the saturday after the election. when the election was called for president-elect biden. that's the kind of thing that we expect from presidents. and the kind of thing that all of us who have been friends with the president for years were hoping for. i think doing it eight weeks later, you know, is too little, too late. >> today all the talk is about the 25th amendment and removing the president from office. is this viable, do you think? >> i don't think so, byron. i don't think either of the

removal procedures is viable because we're 12 days left in the job. whether it's the 25th amendment, which has an appeal process built within it, even if you could convince the vice president and half the cabinet to sign off, the president can still appeal it to both houses of congress. then obviously impeachment has to go through the house and the senate. so none of those things would happen in 12 days. >> what are you hearing from your fellow republicans, people who have stood by the president, and many would say have been enabling him? what are they saying now? >> they're through. i mean, in the mainstream of the party and the people that i've spoken to, they're fed up. and they've had enough. and i think lindsey graham put it really well last night. you know linsey has been as big a supporter of thed about's as anybody, probably, in the united states senate. and he said, enough is enough, i've had it. >> this is a personal one. for the sake of full disclosure, making it clear, i consider you a friend, you're someone i both respect and admire. as someone who has given president trump counsel before,

when you were giving yourself a shave this morning, did you find yourself wondering what more could you have done? any soul searching that you've been going through these last 24 hours or so about what you might have done in the days, weeks, months, years leading up to this moment? >> the answer to that, byron, is yes and no. the soul searching for me is about, what do i do from here to try to help heal the country and unite our party behind the ideas that we believe in? and to be able to make this a part of our past? the no part is, i've known donald trump for 20 years. and i've given him lots of advice over time. some of it he's taken, but a lot of it he hasn't. i know that the mood he's been in the last eight weeks, he was not listening to anyone. so i wasn't thinking yesterday, gosh, could i have done something differently? all i wanted to do when i tried to call him yesterday was to give him a sense of urgency, of how bad this was, how bad it was

for the country, how bad it looked around the world, and that he needed to step up. but obviously, in the end, all of this is up to the man who looks in the mirror himself. and donald trump has to look in that mirror and think about exactly what he wrought yesterday. >> chris christie, thank you so much. i'll see you down the road. >> thank you, byron. coming up, breaking down the security failures at the capitol.

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♪ warning of violence circulated before the siege on the capitol, after it the uproar

over the internet was how law enforcement treated the president's supporters. earlier this evening i spoke with professor of media studies at temple university, mark lamont hill, former assistant secretary of counterterrorism at the department of homeland security elizabeth. thank you for joining us. sarah, first question. president trump has spent months spreading disinformation and conspiracies. just yesterday he riled up his supporters to continue to fight the election results. but earlier tonight, he pledged to work towards a peaceful transition of power. is his message coming too late? >> absolutely. you can't be an arsonist that lights a fire, walks away, a five-alarm fire ensues, and then you prevent the proper amount of firemen to come put out that fire, then they eventually put out the fire, then the next day you say, uh, i want to commend the firemen for putting out the fire and that i sent them there, and i want the people who were

responsible for this to pay for it. you just can't do that. you cannot rewrite history. it's too little, too late. blood was shed. but it's as close to a cob session as i think we're ever going to get, because it's the first time he publicly acknowledged he lost the election. >> you've been tracking domestic extremism. if the president had used this tone and condemned violence, would extremist far-right groups have felt emboldened to have acted the way they did? >> he would have had to change his tone five years ago to have at least tamped down the monstrosity that he has created. but certainly if he had taken a different tone at the rally yesterday, if he had immediately come out and said, you know, this has got to stop, it would have reduced the numbers. when you look at the individuals that were in the group that stormed the castle, it's made up of a whole host of people with different ideologies. some of those ideologies could care less about trump. neo-nazis, even the q-anon crowd. but it would have removed maybe

some of his hard-core supporters from the fight and helped law enforcement get a handle on it faster if he hadn't spoken out. >> not removed the fire but removed some of the kindling around the fire. >> yeah. >> mark, there was stark difference how protesters yesterday were treated by law enforcement and how black lives matter protesters were treated last summer. what does it tell you how people of color are viewed in this country versus white protesters? >> seen as foreigners, outside threats, interlopers. the seditionists we saw yesterday were treated as citizens worthy of protection. before any protest happened at the capitol you saw so many soldiers deployed last year, and also in ferguson in 2014. that's why you saw thousands of arrests over the past year of black lives matter protesters. but you saw very few in washington, d.c. with these seditionists. the call here isn't to get law

enforcement to treat the trump -- the pro-trump protesters more harshly, it's black folk to get treated with this dignity and care, to be treated like citizens. >> 160 republicans in the house say they believe president trump won the election and objected to certifying joe biden's win. what is it going to take for them to change their minds and get on board with the next administration? >> you know, it's so disappointing and infuriating that after an insurrection, storming of the capitol, that that wasn't enough. because so many, as you just stated, went forward with this absurd charade that the election was stolen, that donald trump somehow won it. the only way that craven political actors respond is when they lose. and because they didn't lose their elections, they felt emboldened. so the midterms are coming up in 2022. the american people are way more engaged than they ever have been. they need to pay attention to who their representatives are and whether they were a part of

this seditious act or not, and decide if that's what they really want to represent them in this country. >> give me the context of how, in georgia, we have the first black u.s. senator elected from the state, yet we saw symbols of hate throughout the riots. nooses, confederate flags. how much of yesterday's event is reaction to change we're seeing across the country? >> it's absolutely a reaction to the change that we're seeing, but there's a longstanding tradition of white nationalism, of racism, of anti-semitism. all these things have existed in the united states before and after obama, before and after the georgia election, before and after the 2020 november election. all these things are persistent. what trump has managed to do is organize those people. then when you move into this moment, the frustration of seeing black and brown people come to the polls and decide their own destiny only further infuriated this base of people. so the contrast you see is not an outlier, it's what america is. >> finally, elizabeth, from a

national security standpoint, did what happened yesterday in d.c. make our nation more vulnerable? >> yes. sadly, the attack on the capitol for right-wing extremists, particularly white nationalists, white supremacist ideology, using attack on the capitol as kind of a galvanizing moment, perhaps a clarion call for their acceleration to societal class and civil war. that's the ideology. they think the civil war will allow for an overthrow of the u.s. government, an establishment of a white nation state. i'm very concerned over the next few weeks we're going to see additional acts of violence all throughout the country. >> all very sobering. elizabeth, mark, tara, thank you so much. >> thank you. >> pleasure. up next, the guardians of democracy getting congress back on track. w, consider how many times your family touches the surfaces in your home in 24 hours. try microban 24.

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finally tonight, frontline workers coming to the rescue again. cleaning the capitol after a day of chaos. a silent and steadfast crew of the regular staff joined by a congressman and members of the armed forces, picking up the

pieces so congress and democracy could keep moving forward. silent heroes. that's "nightline" for this evening. see you right back here tomorrow, same time. thanks for the company, america. good night.